Top Customer Feedback Tools for Small Businesses

It is no secret that customer feedback tools are essential to any online business. In today’s market there seems to be an abundance of tools available, many that focus on customer feedback collection. How do you choose which customer feedback tool is right for you? How will you learn to find actual insights (pun intended) from these tools? Will it help you discover that hidden problem on your site that, when fixed, will help you boost conversion?

Starting out small, I want to focus on the small businesses first in this blog post. When I think of Enterprise companies, I think of big budgets, and plenty of resources. I know that this is not always the case, but let’s assume that you are a small company trying to grow, bootstrapping your way to success. Then I honestly think that one of these three tools will help you get started.

The tool itself costs $19 per month and allows you to collect unlimited customer feedback through unlimited forms. It is pretty straight forward how to setup the tool. Its user interface can be improved, especially when comparing it to Getaninsight.com

Feedbackify allows you to upload your own logo, customize the Feedback button on the screen, position the button in 2 locations, and add/edit subcategories.

Screenshots

Feedback form

Category Selection

Subcategories

Follow up form

Thank you page

(Sub)Categories

Configuration

Pros

If you pay annually, you get 2 months free

Upload your own logo

Edit all text, and feedback categories

You can assign subcategories to feedback items

Offers link call of feedback form

Offers 2 places for feedback button (left side, right side)

Cons

Getaninsight

The newest kid on the block is Getaninsight.com. In all honesty, when comparing Feedbackify with Getaninsight you would think that someone simply cloned the other in an effort grab a bit of the market. After having looked around the backend of Getaninsight, I did find it easier to use, to the point, and less cluttered than Feedbackify.

There are some differences though between Feedbackify and Getaninsight. The main difference is is that Getaninsight does not offer subcategories. Although some would argue for the great value of subcategories. Personally I don’t think it is of great value. Read the conclusion to find out why. As for the feedback button, it can be customized, and positioned in 4 locations on the screen instead of 2 with Feedbackify.

Getaninsight is customer feedback collection in its simplest form, which makes it quite powerful.

Cons

iPerceptions (formerly 4Q)

If you have experience with customer feedback tools, then I am sure that you have heard of 4Q. 4Q is an amazing tool that focused on collecting customer feedback in the form of an exit survey. I wrote about 4Q in 2011 and how I used it to calculate true intent conversion rates. 4Q, in the meantime, has been acquired by iPerceptions, but still continues to be a strong contender for top customer feedback tool for small businesses.

Although Feedbackify and Getaninsight show a lot of resemblence to each other, iPerceptions is completely different. First of all, it is not a passive system where a visitor must start the feedback process by clicking on a Feedback button. iPerceptions is an active system that displays an invite to a survey at the start of a visit, allowing the visitor to decide whether they want to participate or not.

When only comparing the free, and cheapest premium plan, it is amazing to see how many features you get access to. Some key features I found interesting were the Google Analytics integration, and different invite pop up options (see screenshot) just to name 2. With the premium account, the least expensive one costing only $19 per month, you are able to collect feedback from visitors on mobile devices. In the back end, you can set the invitation level per platform allowing you to easily only target mobile device users.

Cons

Customer Feedback Tool Conclusion

Since many of these customer feedback tools are available for the small business user, I was very surprised to find out that not a single one of them had a plugin for popular platforms such as WordPress. This would make adoption a lot easier, especially for those non tech savvy business owners eager to collect customer feedback. The same goes for tools where you are billed annually like iPerceptions. The lower range plans should always be billable per month. Keep the small business man in mind.

Also, you can alway argue the need for subcategories. In my experience, the people filling out the subcategories don’t always assign their feedback to the right one, leaving you to clean up the mess. Subcategories can also confuse those visitors wanting to leave feedback on multiple categories (which happens more than you think).

When we consider mobile, it is amazing to see that only iPerceptions work on mobile (phone/tablet) devices. Sure you can argue whether someone needs all these options, but one thing you might want to consider as a business owner is where do you want to be in 5 years time, and do you want your tools to scale with you.

Getaninsight offers good value for money. At only $9 per month, you can get started today with collecting customer feedback. If you are someone who is dependent on subcategories and you don’t mind paying double, then Feedbackify is the solution for you. If you are the kind of business owner that wants to grow in the years to come, and you take customer feedback seriously, then I would only consider using iPerceptions. Think ahead as they say.

The learning curve for iPerceptions might be a bit higher (let me know if I can help you get setup), but once you get started with collecting customer feedback, integrating it with your web analytics tool, creating custom surveys and more, you will never want to switch back to any other tool currently on the market.

Matthew works as Conversion Optimisation Manager at Ziggo BV. In his free time he enjoys family life as well as digging into online user research material whilst frequently generating some of his own, which he freely shares here on actualinsights.com.

Comments

Great article, I would love to get your opinion of our new website research management tool OnCue – http://www.oncueresearch.com. We don’t try to provide the different data solutions but instead act as the tool to enable agile research with your site visitors. You can use OnCue with any survey tool to do targeted on-demand surveys (think what Adobe Survey did), or you can use it with tools like optimal workshop to conduct card sorts etc with your live visitors. OnCue natively manages all of the opt-in dialogs, feedback buttons and responsively displays any tool on the desktop or mobile web so long as the tool is also responsive. Since we act as a research rules layer for your web properties we are also adding age validation to comply with the Child Online Privacy and Protection Act.

We are partnered with SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo and others but you can use any tool that starts with a URL and loads in a browser. We also support more complex tools such as ClickTale, Mixpanel, Loop11.

Let me know what you think and I would love you show you what it can do so you can talk about us for future articles on this subject.

Gerard, you are right about the functionalities of Usabilla Live, they are great. When you start to compare pricing plans you will however notice that for Usabilla Live, you can pay up to 5 times more than Getaninsight. Comparing $49 to a ‘free’ iPerceptions plan, I think that for small businesses this offers a great tool to start with. The same argument can be made for Qualaroo. The article focuses very much on ‘small’ businesses. Small budgets and low resources can really play a pivotal role with selecting online tooling.

There are many customer feedback tools out there nowadays, some better than others. Kampyle and Webreep are the most well known, but these new ones you mention seem interesting. Nice review. i might checkout that iperceptions one sounds interesting.

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